Updated: USGS appears to be removing its websites claiming all glaciers will be melted from Glacier National Park by 2030

Update: Glacier Park’s ‘Gone by 2030’ Web Pages are Still Up; They Are Sticking to Their Guns

by Roger I. Roots

Yesterday, May 5, 2016, I posted and promoted a story indicating that the USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) appears to be removing webpages claiming that all glaciers will have melted away from Glacier National Park by the year 2030–just 14 years from now.

I have since been informed that the USGS has recently relocated their climate-change-oriented sites, and that this relocation occurred recently enough that search engines were not finding them.

My brother Alex Roots notified me that the USGS site contains a blurb indicating the Agency is updating its websites. The government’s repeat photography project (which shows old photos of glaciers–taken at undisclosed calendar dates in past decades–juxtaposed against more recent photos of the glaciers taken in the first or second weeks of September) is still available and is linked to a page indicating the project has become a ‘museum’ type site. See here.

My post from yesterday circulated widely (as I sent it to Anthony Watts of the world’s highest-traffic climate website https://wattsupwiththat.com/. The story ultimately found its way to USGS inboxes.

This morning I received a friendly email from Suzanna C. Soileau, Physical Scientist at USGS-NOROCK in Bozeman, Montana. She assures me that the USGS is not hiding its previous climate change web pages. Soileau alerted me to the following USGS sites which focus on climate change.

It appears that catastrophic climate change will continue to be a major focus of GNP’s visitor promotion.

Stay tuned!
(I’m still waiting for someone to take me up on my $5,000 bet that glaciers will still exist at GNP in 2030.) See here.

URL of story (if applicable): http://lysanderspooneruniversity.com/2016/05/update-glacier-parks-gone-by-2030-web-pages-are-still-up-they-are-sticking-to-their-guns/
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ORIGINAL STORY

Government is apparently removing its websites claiming Glacier National Park will be glacier free by 2030

by Dr. Roger Roots, founder of Lysander Spooner University.

In the fall of 2015 I offered a bet of $5,000 if the glaciers at Glacier National Park disappear by 2030 (as predicted in all GNP signage, pamphlets, films and publications). See here. As of yet, no one has taken me up on my bet.

The Park’s glaciers were melting rapidly throughout the 1990s, as the catastrophic-manmade-global-warming-by-CO2 movement was riding high. Bills were introduced in Congress for “cap and trade” programs, carbon taxes and other reforms.

The National Park Service, and the U.S. Geological Survey published websites showing photos of the Park’s glaciers taken in prior decades next to more recent photos of the same glaciers. This ‘repeat photography’ showed massive decreases in the size of the GNP glaciers.

(I have often pointed out that the government’s photos from prior decades tended to not specify calendar dates. Because glaciers tend to build up in winter and then melt all summer long, the specificity of calendar dates is quite important.)

On January 8 of this year, I posted a prediction that the government would soon alter its GNP-glaciers-gone-by-2030 claims. See here. I asked, “What is the government going to do as 2030 approaches and it becomes clear that their preposterous claims are untrue?”

“I have no doubt,” I wrote then, “that the government will begin modifying these claims by 2025, if not sooner.” I began saving screenshots of government websites which make the claim that manmade-global-warming will melt the GNP glaciers by 2030.

It turns out I didn’t need to wait very long at all. Today, on May 4, 2016, I started looking for the government’s ‘repeat photography’ sites.

IT APPEARS THEY HAVE DISAPPEARED.

Today when you google “repeat photography” and “Glacier National Park,” you are redirected to general-info USGS sites with pictures of hikers in the mountains.

Fortunately, I have screenshots of the prior government projections.

Perhaps the webmasters at USGS are in the process of updating the ‘repeat photography’ sites.

Or perhaps Lysander Spooner University is already having an impact.

SIDE NOTE:

One can still find remnants of the government’s claims on some of its sites. For example, the USGS published a detailed numerical chart (see here) with data columns showing extensive melting between 1966 and 2005. The chart contains an astounding claim: “This table reflects area measurements analyzed from aerial photographs taken in 1966 and 2005. More recent suitable aerial photography on a parkwide scale has not been acquired to update this table due to seasonal conditions and financial constraints for contracted flights.”

This claim is astounding because research money intended to produce evidence for global warming has been pouring out over the past decade.

Wow, that is a great animation. But or course, what it shows is confirmation of the skeptical view point that most/all of the warming we are seeing is just a continuation of the natural warming that started at the end of the LIA.

It’s called advance planning and it probably took a major committee process to get to this point of taking action. This should in no way impede their climate scare press release schedule in the agency queue.

I just re-read “1984”, and its scarily prescient how accurate Orwell got the idea that if you just feed kids propaganda from birth, they won’t ever question that slavery is freedom (see: modern college campuses, but of course it starts in pre-kindergarten).

Eric, the alarmist have made Karl Popper a prophet. Quote from Karl Popper; The logic of scientific discovery; Page 20
======================================================
… “it is always possible to find some way of evading falsification, for example by introducing ad hoc an auxiliary hypothesis, or by changing ad hoc a definition. It is even possible without logical inconsistency to adopt the position of simply refusing to acknowledge any falsifying experience whatsoever. Admittedly, scientists do not usually proceed in this way, but logically such procedure is possible.”
========================================================
simply refusing to acknowledge any falsifying experience whatsoever” makes one think of fifty different explanations for the pause, before just erasing it, and explanations for increased Antarctica sea ice where numerous ad-hoc explanations appeared, except for the known to be cooling southern oceans SST .
“

This warming is ongoing and the loss of the Park’s glaciers continues, with the park’s glaciers predicted to disappear by 2030.

New site:

While less quantitative than other high-tech methods of recording glacial mass, depth, and rate of retreat, repeat photography has become a valuable tool for communicating effects of global warming. With evidence of worldwide glacial recession and modeled predictions that all of the parks glaciers will melt by the year 2030, USGS scientists have begun the task of documenting glacial decline through photography.

‘The USGS is not hiding its previous climate change web pages’.

Right, but busyly editing their mistakes away. This is valuable tool in communicating effects of greenhouse effect. Blah blah.

My family and I went to GNP in the early 1970s. This was when it was cool to worry about a new ice age. I remember at least one guild telling us that although a few inches of the glacier melted each summer, there will always be glaciers in the national park. I don’t think he said that a new ice age was coming, but he sure wasn’t worried that they would melt soon.

Went to the foot of a glacier in the Columbia icefields in Alberta as a kid in 1965. They had markers and photos on display showing the retreat of that glacier since before1900. Rising temps are well documented for over 200 years and nothing to do with CO2.

Google Earth can give you a good idea of the changes since 2005. Go to Iceberg on Google Earth and look at the 2005 historical photos vs. 2014. Zero ice in 2005, lots of ice in 2014. Not good for the propaganda machine.

You are quite right about Google Earth (GE) when it comes to postings like this one.

Out of curiosity, I started up GE on my computer and went to the GNP. The nice thing about GE is that they have past images of the location your are looking at going back to the 1990s. You can compare the image from then with the most recent one.

GE has past images of the GNP going back to August of 1991 (at least the version on my PC does). The most recent images are from July of 2014. I compared the 1991 images of 3 or 4 areas with the most recent ones from August of 2014. At least to me anyway, all of the glaciated areas looked slightly larger
(if not the same) in the 2014 images than in the ones from 1991.

Indeed Russ, it must be quite embarassing for the climate alarmist propaganda machine when the average lay person like myself can do this and conclude that the USGS claims were bogus.

emsnews, that for certain the homicide rate would drop rater than increase as it has under the present mayor. I guess there is a cost when you use gangs to get yourself elected. To bad that price is being paid by the citizen of Chicago and not the mayor himself.

Yeah, I asked a Park Ranger that very question when she was telling us passengers on a cruise up Glacier Bay that “healthy glaciers” would extend all the way to the Bay’s entrance, as they did back in the mid-1700’s.

Sez I: :”So if that were the case, Alaska would still be under glacier ice and none of us would be here…”

Indeed. GnatGeo reported a few years ago that GNP was down to a hundred-some glaciers from 1,100 thousands of years ago, and was continuing to trend down. De-glaciation of GNP has been going on for millennia; attributing it to man made global warming is weapons grade stupid.

Are they not doing what every liar or criminal is doing by trying to secretly evidence of their own agency’s forecasts. Right now, multiple Attorney General’s in this country are suing Exxon and others for “hiding” info on Global Warming. Well, in my view the government should be required to release all information,, including e mails, regarding this decision to remove their own predictions.

Our transitional site includes the new usgs.gov and more than 180 top-level pages (Mission Areas, Programs, Regions, our three new Science Center websites, Products, Connect, About, etc.). We will migrate more USGS websites into this new experience; check back often to see our progress.

The Wayback pages had a contact person for the repeat photo stuff, have you tried that to ask that the web pages be restored?

Our transitional site includes the new usgs.gov and more than 180 top-level pages (Mission Areas, Programs, Regions, our three new Science Center websites, Products, Connect, About, etc.). We will migrate more USGS websites into this new experience; check back often to see our progress.

It is true that govt. incompetence knows no bounds, but I am still inclined to call BS. You build a new website and have that new site go live before the old websites come down. Standard practice is to have the old sites have a notification and a redirect to the new. You do not just “disappear” stuff, and certainly not a theme you have been flogging endlessly for decades without explanation.

Steven Mosher, did you miss,
“(as predicted in all GNP signage, pamphlets, films and publications)’

A quick web search…
The Glaciers of Glacier National Park May All Disappear by … but scientists are warning that they’re all likely to disappear by 2030. … Glaciers are very …
inhabitat.com/the-glaciers-of-glacier-national-park-may…

Glacier Park’s ice may disappear by 2030 | State and Regional …☑
BILLINGS — On the eve of Glacier National Park’s 100th birthday, some of its distinctive features — glaciers — are disappearing and may not be around for the park …
helenair.com/news/state-and-regional/glacier-park-s-ic…

The Glaciers of Glacier National Park May All Disappear by …☑
Scientists estimate that all the ice in Glacier National Park will have melted by 2030. 2030
inhabitat.com/the-glaciers-of-glacier-national-park-may…

I was up to Grinnell Glacier last summer on a hot (almost 90F) day and even that was not enough to melt the ice floating in the lake. From where I saw stood, it looked like there was not that much ice left, but I suspect that there is more flowing down the mountain to this point. https://flic.kr/p/xgLtNZ

I have never been to GNP but those photos you linked to are stunning. I felt as if I was visiting the park. The glacier fall in action must have been quite a treat to photograph. I took note of the U-shaped valley at the lower elevation of the park filled with mature pine trees. It must have contained quite a glacier about 22,000 YBP.

“… it is always possible to find some way of evading falsification, for example by introducing ad hoc an auxiliary hypothesis, or by changing ad hoc a definition. It is even possible without logical inconsistency to adopt the position of simply refusing to acknowledge any falsifying experience whatsoever. Admittedly, scientists do not usually proceed in this way, but logically such procedure is possible»
– Karl Popper

Be nice to see the change in glacier sizes before 1950. I was using the wayback machine and it seems they have pictures from lots of glaciers, but always just the starting picture in the 1900’s and the ending picture around 2008. Is this intentional or do they just have 2 pictures of every glacier? Seems impossible that they have only 2 pictures. Seems pretty clear they are intentionally being misleading.

Little Ice Age (14th-19th centuries A.D.) glacial maxima and 20th century retreat have been well documented in Glacier National Park, Montana, USA. However, the influence of regional and Pacific Basin driven climate variability on these events is poorly understood. We use tree-ring reconstructions of North Pacific surface temperature anomalies and summer drought as proxies for winter glacial accumulation and summer ablation, respectively, over the past three centuries. These records show that the 1850’s glacial maximum was likely produced by ???70 [sic] yrs of cool/wet summers coupled with high snowpack. Post 1850, glacial retreat coincides with an extended period (>50 yr) of summer drought and low snowpack culminating in the exceptional events of 1917 to 1941 when retreat rates for some glaciers exceeded 100 m/yr. This research highlights potential local and ocean-based drivers of glacial dynamics, and difficulties in separating the effects of global climate change from regional expressions of decadal-scale climate variability. Copyright 2004 by the American Geophysical Union.

The glaciers in the Blackfoot-Jackson Glacier Basin of Glacier National Park, Montana, decreased in area from 21.6 square kilometers (km2) in 1850 to 7.4 km2 in 1979. Over this same period global temperatures increased by 0.45??C (?? 0. 15??C). [sic] We analyzed the climatic causes and ecological consequences of glacier retreat by creating spatially explicit models of the creation and ablation of glaciers and of the response of vegetation to climate change. We determined the melt rate and spatial distribution of glaciers under two possible future climate scenarios, one based on carbon dioxide-induced global warming and the other on a linear temperature extrapolation. Under the former scenario, all glaciers in the basin will disappear by the year 2030, despite predicted increases in precipitation; under the latter, melting is slower. Using a second model, we analyzed vegetation responses to variations in soil moisture and increasing temperature in a complex alpine landscape and predicted where plant communities are likely to be located as conditions change.

Terminus fluctuations of five glaciers and the correspondence of these fluctuations to temperature and precipitation patterns were assessed at Oregon’s Mount Hood over the period 1901–2001. Historical photographs, descriptions, and climate data, combined with contemporary GPS measurements and GIS analysis, revealed that each glacier experienced overall retreat, ranging from −62 m at the Newton Clark Glacier to −1102 m at the Ladd Glacier. Within this overall trend, Mount Hood’s glaciers experienced two periods each of retreat and advance. Glaciers retreated between 1901 and 1946 in response to rising temperatures and declining precipitation. A mid-century cool, wet period led to glacier advances. Glaciers retreated from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s as a result of rising temperatures and generally declining precipitation. High precipitation in the late 1990s caused slight advances in 2000 and 2001. The general correspondence of Mount Hood’s glacier terminus fluctuations with glaciers in Washington and Oregon suggests that regional, decadal-scale weather and climate events, driven by the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, play a key role in shaping atmosphere-cryosphere interactions in Pacific Northwest mountains. Deviations from the general glacier fluctuation pattern may arise from local differences in glacier aspect, altitude, size, and steepness as well as volcanic and geothermal activity, topography, and debris cover.

On the wall of the main Park office at GNP there is a map [official USGS map] that details the retreat of the main glaciers in the going back to the 1790s with intermediate data through to the 20th century.

What is remarkable about this, is that the map clearly shows that the largest part of glacier loss occurred between 1800 and the 1920s when the Industrial Revolution was just getting going in earnest.

I noticed this when I visited GNP a few years ago and pointed it out to GNP staff, and asked how that information fitted in with the CAGW trope. Firstly, none of the staff was actually aware of what the map showed, and were completely stumped by my question – one of them actually telling me that was proof of man made global warming…..

The National Park Service has a Climate Change Response Program to ensure a consensus response. There can be no climate deniers employed by the Interior Department.

The NPS website is still pushing the Cook 97% paper and attributing it to the IPCC:

A recent survey of climatologists reveals that 97% of those scientists think that global climate change is occurring presently and that human activity is the primary cause…
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which conducted the survey above…

Reblogged this on Climatism and commented:
“Why do I suspect the USGS has chosen not to seek funds for new aerial photography because such photography will show that GNP’s GLACIERS HAVE GROWN SINCE 2005.” !!

A great example of deliberate and organised Government funded man-made global warming alarmism that appears rife within Government funded institutions.

Another example which proves – unfortunately and sadly – that Government agencies appear the last places to seek the truth on global warming, climate change, global weirding or whatever they choose to call it on any particular day!

Of course they are, global warming and climate change are the fantasies of the left. If you believe that either is happening and the earth is heating up then you haven’t been outside in quite a few years.

“While the glaciers that carved GNP’s majestic peaks were part of a glaciation that ended about 12,000 years ago, current glaciers are considered geologically new, having formed about ~7,000 thousand years ago. These glaciers grew substantially during the Little Ice Age (LIA) that began around 1400 A.D and reached their maximum size at the end of the LIA around A.D.1850.” – ‘Retreat of Glaciers in Glacier National Park’, Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center, United States Geological Survey. 2010-04-13.

So, the original glaciers were gone before new glaciers “grew substantially” and “reached their maximum size at the end of the LIA around 1850.” If they “grew substantially” during the last cold period is it not reasonable to expect they would melt, even “substantially”, during the current warm period?

Perhaps they should send some women to go fly around the glaciers and ask the glaciers questions with a “feminine” perspective. *rolls eyes*

Something I notice when looking at comparison shots is that the perspective is usually not quite right. Sometimes it is better than others, but most pictures are clearly not taken from the exact same spot/angle/distance, and the new ones are not even manipulated to be the same scale (well, they probably are manipulated, just not this way). With all the photographic technology, mapping/positioning technology, and improved transportation, it should not be difficult to figure out where the pictures were taken, and how to get there.

So, let me get this right: The future of past predictions about glaciers melting is no longer in doubt. The destiny of past predictions of future melting is that they will evaporate like spittle on the podium of Climate Alarm.

The failed predictions will scroll up and vanish as sure as the alarming words that framed them rise into the ether that lies above the tilted glass mirror of the climate-speak teleprompter, reversing, as it does, the projections emanating from the real world where facts and science reign.

Once again the teleprompter of alarm has got it backwards. Next thing you know, we will be told that some of the alarming charts have been used upside down! I mean, anything is possible when dealing with mirrors, images and a whole lot of smoke.

The OP mentioned these photos are not calendared, you did the same thing as USGS.

The months are kind of important, no one disagrees they have retreated between 1940 and 2006, the only two dated ones there, but even if 2006 is lower than 1940 2006 can still be an increase on 2005, which is what the OP claims

Plus we need a complete calendared list to see the procession of years and what the ice is doing (All taken in the same month, or winter summer pictures) to actually measure progress.

Tell you what, Toneb. I’ll make you the same $$ wager as the OP. If that Jonesian Kool-Aid you’ve drunk has fortified you enough, you’ll put your money where your mouse is and get some $kin in the game. How can you lose? Because … the 97%!

Toneb
Still missing the point, are you: does this constitute scientifically valid proof of any kind for CAGW?

See my post above: GNP glaciers lost over 75% over their ice mass during the 1800s when man-made CO2 emissions were in their infancy. Care to offer a reasoned explanation for that?

Are you aware of the decades long time lag between what happens at the upper reaches of a glacier and what you see at the “tongue”? Anyone with a 101 understanding of glaciers would grasp the implications of that.

Are you aware that glaciers elsewhere [e.g. French Alps and parts of the Himalayas] are showing renewed growth? Care to explain that?

And BTW, are you aware that it snowed in London and southern England last Sunday, May 1? Imagine if that had been a “heat wave”.. Your crowd would have been screaming bloody climate disruption. Grow up.

by Dr. Roger Roots, founder of Lysander Spooner University. Yeah. I just founded a “university”. Aholes United. 10 grand will get you a piece off TP signed by Roots. When are we going to start calling these idjits out as the nerds they are? Oh wait. They run these unis,so they must be smart. NOT.

Does it matter where the information comes from as long as it is accurate and verifiable? Or do you prefer NOAA/GISS/HadCru/USGS where the information is demonstrably inaccurate and the raw data no longer verifiable?

Or are you just a stuck-up Ivy League / OxBridge twit? Or someone who thinks like Trump that uneducated is good…

The park website used to state that the glaciers are about 3000 years old. This has been replaced with a statement that the glaciers are leftovers from the last ice age but have receded and grown many times since then. Notice that both statements can be true but they are leaving out the fact that ‘receded’ means receded to nothing then reappeared again.

2 Weeks ago the USDA/DNRC Website showed MOST of Western Montana above 100% Normal water levels. Some even were exceeding 110%. The County were I live (Sanders) was also 90%. Then during our last 3 days of continued rain they suddenly during that rain dropped all areas to 80%.

While I will admit the snows on the Missions, Squaw PK, McCormick PK, Pat’s Knob have largely melted due to that rain it is clear that figures are being changed. This is also confirmed by the Amateur Radio Weather Stations that report (Different Figures) to either the Weather Underground or other locations.

I would also add that in keeping with the “agenda” of the SKC Tribal Water issues, closed meetings, reporters being vacated from public meetings as well as they going into “Closed Sessions” that while in Most States it is becoming ILLEGAL to collect Rain Water… BUT Corporate America who is strip mining the United States, that they will gladly SELL you a bottle from $1.19 or more. Making Water cost more then a gallon of gas now.

P.S. The Law definition of the United States lists the US as a Corporation. This is why through odious debts that Corporate America and it’s corporate PRIVATIZED Banking pogrom gets bail-out’s and bail-in’s and charged to YOU and your Children’s Children to repay that which YOU didn’t authorize. i.e. FASCISM.

Careful, that “normal” baseline USDA references only averages back to (drum roll) … 1981. So, for discussing climate change, they have little value (except to AGW zombies.) There are manual snowpack records for may locales dating back to the 1800s, but even those don’t encompass glacial cycles.

A common method of deception is to show picture of a glacier circa 1900-1910, then show a picture of the same glacier in the 1990’s/early 2000, with the implication that the glacier has just recently began melting.

Omitting pictures from the 1920’s and 1930’s showing the significant melting during that period.
It as if they want to hide something.

In conjunction with the past century’s long-term temperature increase, ocean-driven climate trends (Pacific Decadal Oscillation) influence GNP’s regional climate. Tree-ring based climate records reveal PDO effects that have resulted in 20-30 year periods of hot, dry summers coupled with decreased winter snowpack (Pederson et al. 2004). These periods have induced rapid recession, as high as 100 m/yr between 1917-1941, and influence the current rate of recession. Even during cooler phases of the PDO cycle, glaciers have continued to shrink, albeit at a slower rate.

Formed about 7,000 years ago, began their retreat in the 1800s. Period of fastest retreat was apparently 1917-1941. Not much humans can do to prolong their existence, so let’s all burn petrol to go see them before they’re gone.

You have to burn a LOT of petrol to get to and around GNP. It is in the middle of nowhere. You either drive or you fly, then you have to drive around the park (not a hardship, it is lovely). You can do some hiking, but unless you are a super Appalachian Trail type hiker, you probably do not want to only travel by foot. I can tell you right now, the winter caretakers would probably appreciate some “warming”. When I visited, Many Glacier Lodge staff talked about how it was not uncommon for bighorn sheep to fall through skylights during the winter, because part of the lodge would be almost completely buried under the snow. The sheep would step on the skylight and…well, the caretakers would find it the next time they checked the room. The current caretakers run a blog with pictures of their exploits. Has not been updated since last spring, but gorgeous photos. Plenty of snow. http://www.mghwinterkeeper.com

In 2010, the Center for Biological Diversity petitioned for Zapada glacier, a western glacier stonefly only found in alpine streams of Glacier National Park, Montana, to be listed as endangered species under the U.S. Endangered Species Act.

Sometime during the last 7,000 years, this stonefly subspecies evolved to thrive in a particular environment that is rapidly shrinking. To save the Zapada glacier stonefly, the Center for Biological Diversity has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, demanding the fly be relocated to less-threated glacial streams.

Please contact the USFWS and demand that stonefly subspecies resident in other supposedly-suitable streams be polled to determine their willingness to accept the refugees.

They’ll never take the bet. I’ve tried with a friends. They’re content to invoke the Appeal To Authority Fallacy, smugly. They really don’t care if AGW is true, from their perspective it’s up to skeptics to disprove the theory, presumably by waiting 50 or 100 years, and meanwhile they reap the benefits of “settled science” and the redistribution of wealth or whichever fallout they’re interested – “sticking it to Big Oil” or the Koch Brothers, for the more sophomoric, or “Saving the Planet” for the quixotic..

I’m still glad to see the search here at WUWT is still for the truth. What seemed to be missing turned out to be moved (and modified), and that was quickly admitted and links provided so we could check. That is not what would happen at most alarmist sites.

Since the glaciers in our mountains are newbies, history-wise, maybe the hype could be switched to panic over the climate change that CAUSED the glaciers. 2000 BC – “OMG OMG OMG WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE ‘CAUSE GLACIERS ARE FORMING!!!!”